First of all tell us a little bit about yourself and your role?
I didn't start out as a surveyor, I started my career at Halifax Building Society working in intermediary sales roles becoming part of Lloyds Bank and eventually ended up in a senior role at Colleys (then owned by Lloyds Banking Group). I joined Countrywide Surveying Services (CSS) in 2016 and became Managing Director in 2020.
I have the honour of being responsible for over 650 people, which makes us one of the largest residential valuation and surveying business in UK. It's a fascinating business and I love my role as we continually steer the business through this ever-changing industry providing services which help people but their dream homes.
You’ve written recently about the need for greater awareness with consumers as to the value of a survey, why do you feel this this issue so important?
Over the last 12 months, we have taken the lead in the industry around the need to deliver good customer outcomes through taking a survey and only recently we launched a quarterly index to track the take up of home conditions reports by customers – which currently stands at a shocking 10%.
There are huge benefits from talking about the magnitude and value of a survey as early in the buying process as possible and the intermediary market can play a hugely significant role within this process.
So, it’s key to not only continue raising awareness in consumer circles but also within the intermediary market to ensure that borrowers are fully educated on what remains an often misunderstood part of the purchase process. One of the most important factors being - the difference between a mortgage valuation and a survey.
Due to a lack of awareness around its importance, a survey can also be viewed as an additional cost rather than an integral one. The thing homebuyers need to bear in mind is that opting for the right survey could actually save them time, money and heartache. The cost can often be a fraction of the potential expense from work which needs to be completed on the property which was not identified before contracts are signed.
In short, all too many buyers who haven’t sourced the right level of information or received the right advice are leaving themselves in a precarious position and open to potentially damaging financial consequences if unexpected and expensive issues arise post-completion. After all, the more information purchasers receive upfront, the less likely it is that unforeseen complications will arise further down the line.
With one of the largest employed surveyor workforces in the UK, what are the challenges in finding new talent for the business and how do you approach this?
With over 400 new surveyors over the years being brought through our Academy, we continually develop talent through our Pathways programme, which ensures lesser represented groups are included. We also run a leadership programme for junior managers, one to one coaching for our senior team and mentoring. Our Graduate Academy also brings in diverse talent and so increasing our female surveyors to 81 (so 22% of our total field workforce) and our ethnic diversity.
People will always be a key component in any successful business. Meaning that continued investment from a training and development perspective is vital in adapting to ever-shifting market dynamics. And for those firms looking to recruit, this also means maintaining a clear focus on recruiting the best in class across a potentially broader spectrum.
We are constantly evaluating how we can make surveying an attractive career option for more people, whatever their gender or race. It's taken time to establish a clear recruitment and educational pathway to enable us to attract people of the right calibre into the sector. This highlights the importance of finding the right balance between qualifications, experience, attitude, ambition and transferable skills.
In reality, it’s impossible to get this right 100% of the time but it remains our corporate responsibility to invest in the right people as early in the process as possible and support them throughout this process as best we can.
What does the future hold for the residential surveying industry and how are you shaping the business to meet future needs and demands of borrowers and lenders alike?
Our industry leading ESG strategy, named Measure, Act and Plan, is propelling us forward as a beacon of responsible corporate citizenship. Guided by sustainability at every step, we’re integrating environmental stewardship, social inclusivity, and robust governance practices. We are paving the way for transformative change, embedding ethical values into our core operations and suppliers, cultivating meaningful partnerships, and empowering communities to thrive in harmony with our planet.
We continually strive to challenge the status quo and have developed data-driven products giving greater surety around valuation and speeding up process for clients, whilst continuing to invest in making industry quicker but safer. This includes linking in with conveyancers direct, so that they can answer questions immediately to reduce barriers and friction.
We’ve worked with many of our large bank customers, like Santander, on energy products for their customers and have extended our Retrofit and EPC skills. This has involved us working on a huge sustainability project by managing retrofit on a property in Yorkshire as a test case.
